Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has co-authored and endorsed the new “Trustless Manifesto,” a call to preserve decentralization and censorship resistance while urging developers to avoid adding intermediaries or checkpoints simply to boost adoption.
The manifesto, also penned by Ethereum Foundation researchers Yoav Weiss and Marissa Posner, warns that crypto platforms compromise trustlessness the moment they introduce hosted nodes or centralized relayers. While such measures may seem harmless, the document argues, they set a precedent, and each additional checkpoint gradually erodes the protocol’s permissionless nature.
“Trustlessness is not a feature to be tacked on afterward. It is the foundation itself,” the manifesto states. “Without it, everything else — efficiency, UX, scalability — is just decoration on a fragile core.”
“When complexity tempts us to centralize, we must remember: every line of convenience code can become a choke point.”
Although the manifesto wasn’t directed at any individual or organization, it arrives amid criticism that some Ethereum layer-2 networks have prioritized scalability and faster adoption at the expense of decentralization.
“We measure success not by transactions per second, but by trust reduced per transaction,” wrote Buterin, Posner, and Weiss.
Recent events have underscored the risks of centralization. During last month’s Amazon Web Services outage, Coinbase’s Base chain saw throughput drop by roughly 25% when its AWS-hosted sequencer went offline. By contrast, Arbitrum and Optimism — which employ multi-cloud infrastructures — remained fully operational.
The manifesto also drew support from several other Ethereum community members, including Ethereum Foundation contributor Tom Teman and pseudonymous researcher hitas.base.eth.
Buterin’s broader vision: a return to cypherpunk roots
The Trustless Manifesto builds on Buterin’s earlier efforts to reinforce Ethereum’s founding ideals. In December 2023, he called to “make Ethereum cypherpunk again,” advocating for technologies like zero-knowledge proofs, account abstraction, and advanced encryption tools to strengthen user privacy and autonomy.
Staying the course amid institutional adoption
The renewed push for decentralization comes as Ethereum experiences growing institutional interest — from the launch of spot Ether ETFs in July 2023 to an increasing number of public companies acquiring ETH for their balance sheets.
Despite this influx of Wall Street attention, the Ethereum Foundation and its core developers remain committed to advancing the network’s technical roadmap, ensuring Ethereum remains decentralized, self-sovereign, and resistant to censorship.
